Apologies, whoever you are, but couldn't resist stealing this pic from your blog. God, I just want to pick that gorgeous thing up and give it a cuddle...
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Cute pic stolen off some stranger's blog
Apologies, whoever you are, but couldn't resist stealing this pic from your blog. God, I just want to pick that gorgeous thing up and give it a cuddle...
Contingency planning and double divorces
Had a short day today - mostly gossiping, rearranging my team's timetable for month end, and attending a THREE HOUR Senior Mgt Meeting focusing mostly on contingency planning and security. We had the fun task of deciding who the essential and non-essential staff were - naturally, we each believed that we were absolutely essential. Benefit of rank (aka abuse of power), you see. Then the slightly less fun of thinking up worse case scenarios and their "trigger points". And the absolutely zero fun of deciding steps to take in event of an evacuation. The last just made me feel sick even thinking about it. Or it might have been the cake we were eating during the meeting...
I now understand why field staff are so resistant to being evacuated - it's that feeling that you're giving up and running away just when the going gets tough. Like what the UN does. Fucking UN... They get paid a hardship allowance and get regular R&R for living in luxurious 5 star compounds, and dining out in high priced restaurants - and they still whine about the situation. I know that they are in fact being targeted during these demostrations but about time they're earnt those criminally HUGE salaries. Besides, their 5 star compounds are gorgeous. Grrrr.
Then we had fun trying to sort out the situation with fuel due to a large proportion of petrol stations having been either set alight or otherwise damaged. (For protestors suffering shortages in fuel due to huge price hikes, destroying what fuel there is is probably not the most logical thing to do, but what do I know). Since we only have electricity a couple of hours a day if that, we're so dependent on fuel to power our generators, not only for moving about.
Anyway, on a lighter note, read the following story in an African newspaper that a visiting consultant supplied us with:
"MAN GIVEN A DOUBLE DOSE OF DIVORCE
When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first.
He need not have worried.
The two women got on so well they decided to leave him at the same time.
Faced with their united stand, Roslan, 44, a Muslim, divorced his two wives, aged 46 and 35, in a Shariah Court in Terengganu State yesterday.
According to Islamic law, a woman can submit a request to leave her husband, but the pronoucement of divorce must come from the man or a court. Islam allows a man to have four wives.
Salwa Mansor, the second wife's lawyer, said the wives cited irreconcilable differences and other complaints.
Roslan said he was aware his two wives had become close over the years. "They are like good friends but I never imagined both of them had collectively decided to divorce me," Roslan added."
I loved his statement. Typical male obliviousness...
I now understand why field staff are so resistant to being evacuated - it's that feeling that you're giving up and running away just when the going gets tough. Like what the UN does. Fucking UN... They get paid a hardship allowance and get regular R&R for living in luxurious 5 star compounds, and dining out in high priced restaurants - and they still whine about the situation. I know that they are in fact being targeted during these demostrations but about time they're earnt those criminally HUGE salaries. Besides, their 5 star compounds are gorgeous. Grrrr.
Then we had fun trying to sort out the situation with fuel due to a large proportion of petrol stations having been either set alight or otherwise damaged. (For protestors suffering shortages in fuel due to huge price hikes, destroying what fuel there is is probably not the most logical thing to do, but what do I know). Since we only have electricity a couple of hours a day if that, we're so dependent on fuel to power our generators, not only for moving about.
Anyway, on a lighter note, read the following story in an African newspaper that a visiting consultant supplied us with:
"MAN GIVEN A DOUBLE DOSE OF DIVORCE
When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first.
He need not have worried.
The two women got on so well they decided to leave him at the same time.
Faced with their united stand, Roslan, 44, a Muslim, divorced his two wives, aged 46 and 35, in a Shariah Court in Terengganu State yesterday.
According to Islamic law, a woman can submit a request to leave her husband, but the pronoucement of divorce must come from the man or a court. Islam allows a man to have four wives.
Salwa Mansor, the second wife's lawyer, said the wives cited irreconcilable differences and other complaints.
Roslan said he was aware his two wives had become close over the years. "They are like good friends but I never imagined both of them had collectively decided to divorce me," Roslan added."
I loved his statement. Typical male obliviousness...
Friday, 11 April 2008
Back to work...
Things seem relatively back to normal. We're opening the office at 9am with the strict proviso on all our staff to check their local news before venturing out.
I'm sure we'll have an update on the situation when the office opens but my thoughts are that this is a rather deceptive quiet. No substantive measure have been annonced to deal with the crisis in the short term and the leaders of the demostrations have said that they would give the government up to Monday noon to come up with a better package or else... Not very reassuring.
Just thought I'd share an another article on food prices from Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/731157E1-133D-490D-ACF7-3405744C491D.htm
They also mention the shift to biofuels as well as speculation on the market as causes for the world-wide explosion in food prices. What I found especially interesting was the mention of the percentage of household income spent on food between the poor and rich countries:
"Most people in the world's wealthiest countries take food for granted.
Even the poorest fifth of households in the US spend only 16 per cent of their budget on food.
By contrast, Nigerian families spend 73 per cent of their budgets on eating, Vietnamese 65 per cent, while Indonesians allocate half.
Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 per cent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation."
It reminds me of what George Alagiah wrote in his book "A passage to Africa" about how you could measure the poverty of a family by how often they go out to buy food. Pretty good measure that - should add that into the HDI...
Anyway, off to work.
I'm sure we'll have an update on the situation when the office opens but my thoughts are that this is a rather deceptive quiet. No substantive measure have been annonced to deal with the crisis in the short term and the leaders of the demostrations have said that they would give the government up to Monday noon to come up with a better package or else... Not very reassuring.
Just thought I'd share an another article on food prices from Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/731157E1-133D-490D-ACF7-3405744C491D.htm
They also mention the shift to biofuels as well as speculation on the market as causes for the world-wide explosion in food prices. What I found especially interesting was the mention of the percentage of household income spent on food between the poor and rich countries:
"Most people in the world's wealthiest countries take food for granted.
Even the poorest fifth of households in the US spend only 16 per cent of their budget on food.
By contrast, Nigerian families spend 73 per cent of their budgets on eating, Vietnamese 65 per cent, while Indonesians allocate half.
Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 per cent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation."
It reminds me of what George Alagiah wrote in his book "A passage to Africa" about how you could measure the poverty of a family by how often they go out to buy food. Pretty good measure that - should add that into the HDI...
Anyway, off to work.
Thursday, 10 April 2008
9th April - The President speaks...
The President had spoken and said ... well, not much really. Commiserated with the protestors, appealed for stability and calm, announced some subsidies against the cost of living, and refused to lower taxes against imported goods. Basically, nothing that would actually help the immediate situation - and the fact that it took a week (plus an attack on the palace) to come up with this is ridiculous.
It’s now evening and things seem pretty calm – haven’t seen any smoke or heard any gunfire for most of the afternoon so I’m hoping things have stabilised. However, we’re still under curfew until further notice. And even if things are calm, given that there are barricades and debris on the major roads and that most of the staff use public transport (which is not currently running) to get to work – I can’t see that things will return to normal for at least the rest of the week.
Today’s been a complete write-off – have managed to do very little work. The motivation just isn’t there despite the huge amounts to do. In some ways, I hope that I am stuck at home tomorrow again to really get to grips with all the stuff that I don’t actually need the server. Of which there are plenty. But then I’ll probably end up doing nothing then as well.
Anyway, sounds like the international media has finally caught up with the news in Haiti although most of them seem to file it along with the various other food riots that have been happening all over the world recently. This, however, is a vid that I found on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7330000/newsid_7337900/7337920.stm?bw=nb&mp=rm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1
It’s now evening and things seem pretty calm – haven’t seen any smoke or heard any gunfire for most of the afternoon so I’m hoping things have stabilised. However, we’re still under curfew until further notice. And even if things are calm, given that there are barricades and debris on the major roads and that most of the staff use public transport (which is not currently running) to get to work – I can’t see that things will return to normal for at least the rest of the week.
Today’s been a complete write-off – have managed to do very little work. The motivation just isn’t there despite the huge amounts to do. In some ways, I hope that I am stuck at home tomorrow again to really get to grips with all the stuff that I don’t actually need the server. Of which there are plenty. But then I’ll probably end up doing nothing then as well.
Anyway, sounds like the international media has finally caught up with the news in Haiti although most of them seem to file it along with the various other food riots that have been happening all over the world recently. This, however, is a vid that I found on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7330000/newsid_7337900/7337920.stm?bw=nb&mp=rm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Still waiting...
Have both the radio and the TV on waiting for Preval to speak. Nothing - just retro Bob Marley music with the message that the President will give a special message "En quelques instants...". It's been there for at least the last hour...
Mary made a comment that it's a bit like when there's a coup in a country - all local TV stations just play music while the population waits. The smoke that we can see from our balcony along with sporadic gun shots and helicopters aren't making us feel any less nervous. It's most probably harmless - more tires burning, some idiots waving their guns around, and VIPs travelling around in helos for security reasons - but defnitely not helping.
A couple of articles on the global rise in food prices:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/international/2008/04/08/002-denree-alimentaire-prix.shtml
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1684910,00.html
What both, not to mention other articles all agree on is that this food crisis is not going away anytime soon and that it's very much linked to the energy crisis, not to mention climate change and population growth.
In terms of the price of rice, apparently the catalyst of the current crisis is due to a virtual doubling of the price over the last few weeks.
Mary made a comment that it's a bit like when there's a coup in a country - all local TV stations just play music while the population waits. The smoke that we can see from our balcony along with sporadic gun shots and helicopters aren't making us feel any less nervous. It's most probably harmless - more tires burning, some idiots waving their guns around, and VIPs travelling around in helos for security reasons - but defnitely not helping.
A couple of articles on the global rise in food prices:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/international/2008/04/08/002-denree-alimentaire-prix.shtml
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1684910,00.html
What both, not to mention other articles all agree on is that this food crisis is not going away anytime soon and that it's very much linked to the energy crisis, not to mention climate change and population growth.
In terms of the price of rice, apparently the catalyst of the current crisis is due to a virtual doubling of the price over the last few weeks.
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